Pennsylvania judges convicted in “kids-for-cash” prison scheme ordered to pay over $200 million to victims

The two former Pennsylvania judges who were implicated and convicted in the so-called “kids-for-cash” scheme that sent juveniles to private detention centers in return for financial kickbacks were ordered this week to pay over $200 million in compensatory and punitive damages to hundreds of victims.

A US District Court judge ordered Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan to pay $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages for their roles in a scheme in which they, as judges presiding over juvenile court cases in the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas, sentenced children as young as 8 years old to serve time in two private, for-profit jails in the state in return for financial repayments from the company who built and co-owned the jails. 

The two judges raked in $2.8 million in kickbacks from the juvenile imprisonment scheme, which sent minors to jail over infractions like jaywalking and smoking on school property. The scheme sent over 2,300 minors to jail over a period of about eight years. 

“It’s a huge victory,” said Marsha Levick, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “To have an order from a federal court that recognizes the gravity of what the judges did to these children in the midst of some of the most critical years of their childhood and development matters enormously, whether or not the money gets paid.”

Ciavarella and Conahan both served prison sentences, but while Ciavarella is still in detention in Kentucky, Conahan was released to home confinement in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.